LONDON - A French secret serviceman acting on the express orders of Nicolas Sarkozy is suspected of murdering Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, it was sensationally claimed this week. 

He is said to have infiltrated a violent mob mutilating the captured Libyan dictator last year and shot him in the head.

The motive, according to well-placed sources in the North African country, was to stop Gaddafi being interrogated about his highly suspicious links with Sarkozy, who was President of France at the time. Sarkozy, who once welcomed Gaddafi as a 'brother leader' during a state visit to Paris, was said to have received millions from the Libyan despot to fund his election campaign in 2007.

The conspiracy theory will be of huge concern to Britain which sent RAF jets to bomb Libya last year with the sole intention of “saving civilian lives.”

Now Mahmoud Jibril, who served as interim Prime Minister following Gaddafi's overthrow, told Egyptian TV: 'It was a foreign agent who mixed with the revolutionary brigades to kill Gaddafi.'

Diplomatic sources in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, meanwhile suggested to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra that a foreign assassin was likely to have been French.

The paper writes: 'Since the beginning of NATO support for the revolution, strongly backed by the government of Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi openly threatened to reveal details of his relationship with the former president of France, including the millions of dollars paid to finance his candidacy at the 2007 elections.' One Tripoli source said: 'Sarkozy had every reason to try to silence the Colonel and as quickly as possible.'

The view is supported by information gathered by investigators in Benghazi, Libya's second city and the place where the 'Arab Spring' revolution against Gaddafi started in early 2011.

Rami El Obeidi, the former head of foreign relations for the Libyan transitional council, said he knew that Gaddafi had been tracked through his satellite telecommunications system as he talked to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. 

NATO experts were able to trace the communications traffic between the two Arab leaders, and so pinpoint Gaddafi to the city of Sirte, where he was murdered on October 20, 2011.

NATO jets shot up Gaddafi's convoy, before rebels on the ground dragged Gaddafi from a drain where he was hiding and then subjected him to a violent attack which was videotaped.

In another sinister twist to the story, a 22-year-old who was among the group which attacked Gaddafi and who frequently brandished the gun said to have killed him, died in Paris last Monday.

Sarkozy, who lost the presidential election in May, has continually denied receiving money from Gaddafi. He is facing investigations for financial irregularities. 

-Mail Online UK, TAAN